On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I should just add that "idealist accidentalism" is *exactly* as irrefutable > as solipsism. > > Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted.
What would refute physicalism? It would seem to me that quantum mechanics is sufficiently flexible to account for nearly any observation, especially since the many worlds interpretation and the possibility of multiverses would seem likely to give rise to so many permutations. Even probabilistic physical laws and a single infinite universe would still seem likely to give rise to some pretty bizarre scenarios, wouldn’t it? Now, maybe quantum mechanics will be replaced by a different theory, but can you imagine any possible feature of such a theory that would rule out a physicalist interpretation? And, again, any rule-based framework for explaining our conscious experiences means, by definition, that don’t present or believe arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the rules that underlie our experiences. That these rules generate rational beliefs is a leap of faith, and can neither be refuted nor proven. If the underlying process *didn’t* cause us to present and believe rational arguments, there would be no way to detect this, since there is no way to step outside of the process’s control of one’s beliefs to independently verify the "reasonableness" of the beliefs it generates. A physicalist may be correct about the physical nature of reality, but if so, this is solely due to his improbable good luck in existing in a rare "honest" physical universe whose initial conditions and causal laws resulted in his holding true beliefs about his universe's initial conditions and causal laws. Given all that, ultimately I doubt your beliefs are any better footing than solipsism either. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
